City commission briefs

City commissioners on Tuesday unanimously agreed to spend $251,500 to hire a consulting firm to help create a development code that will allow for the construction of "traditional" neighborhoods.

The contract with PlaceMakers, a California-based consulting company, will allow the city to create a code incorporating Traditional Neighborhood Design, which is a concept that designs developments with a mix of uses and in a style more similar to a downtown or a turn-of-the-century neighborhood.

The group will be in town from Jan. 31 to Feb. 6 to conduct meetings with city commissioners, planners and interested residents. The seven-day "charrette" process will focus on developing ideas of how areas of town could be redeveloped or expanded using a traditional neighborhood design, if property owners choose to do so.

Areas the city has selected are downtown area, near 19th Street and Haskell Avenue, 23rd and Louisiana streets, and 25th and Iowa streets.

The consultants also will be looking to show how new areas south of the Wakarusa River and west of the South Lawrence Trafficway could be designed using a traditional neighborhood concept.

Impact fees to face discussion on Dec. 12

City Manager David Corliss alerted commissioners that he'll likely ask them to have their first significant discussion on creating impact fees at the city's Dec. 12 meeting.

He told commissioners that his staff is working on a plan that would use impact fees to help pay for additional park purchases.

Impact fees are a one-time fee charged to developers based on the size of their projects. The fees offer a way, besides normal taxes, to help cities pay for certain city services.

Impact fees....great idea! Lets raise the cost of housing in Lawrence to pay for a few parks! Its not like we have a problem with excessive government regulation and fees in West Lawrence already! How about you actually use the money for something useful like solving the sewage capacity debacle???

The city commission is getting ready to increase the price of all new housing in Lawrence, as they are set to discuss creating new impact fees (aka... new tax for people buying new houses in Lawrence).

This will easily add another $4,000 to $8,000 to the price of every new home, and perhaps even more considering the 3 PLC commissioners want 10 acre parks every quarter mile. If that materializes, new home owners are looking at another $10,000 minimum.

People, get off your a$$es and vote these 3 idiots off the city commission in April.

All new home owners are paying more than their fair share, and have been doing so for years in this city. They are paying for all of your services, and downtown. Guess where all the money is coming from to pay for all the round-a-bouts, traffic non-calming devices, new streets, sewers, water lines, sidewalks, flowers for downtown, new water and sewer for downtown, etc..?

The new home owners are subsidizing the rest of Lawrence, especially everywhere east of Iowa and downtown.

I'd like to see you Bozo, and all your neighbors pay for your share of the $700,000 round-a-bout at 19th, that you so dearly love. And all of the other traffic non-calming devices in east Lawrence. Oh thats right.... you want all the new home owners in Lawrence to pay for that...

Now, I going to work, so that I can pay for all of my expenses as well as your share of city services Bozo.